Touchstone 1 - Stray

spit out black stuff and drink some water – from which I figured that the Setari again have orders not to touch me.
    I hate being in the medical section, especially anything which involves drips and catheters and tubes. Tare’s technology seems to be pretty similar to Earth’s in respect of tubes, and the greysuit sent Zee away and did a bunch of tests, and fed me about a half a cup of a horrible salty-sweet drink, but thankfully removed the tubes. Some time during this I caught sight of my arms, and was holding them up and staring at them when Zee came back with Maze and a different greysuit.
    “I look like the world’s worst junkie,” I said, still in English, turning my arms to better appreciate their purple and blue glory. I’d never seen anything like it. Even my palms were bruised.
    I couldn’t understand what they said back, of course. Maze looked like he’d had a proper rest, so I’m guessing it was a lot later than the first time I woke. They were being pleased I was awake, but serious at the same time, and Zee said something to me slowly which had the word for interface in it a couple of times. I just shrugged, though I was finding that moving hurt and staying still hurt, which didn’t really seem fair. Then I felt all tingly for a moment, and like I was catching up with myself.
    “Can you understand now?” the greysuit asked, and I nodded, but put my hand back over my bandaged eye because it had started hurting rather more than anything else. “Some lingering malformation there,” the greysuit said helpfully, but did something which made it stop hurting. “It’ll be a few days before the remedial work is complete and the remnant toxins are flushed from her system,” he added. “But there doesn’t seem to be any loss of function.”
    “Mission log’s intact,” Maze murmured to Zee, and nodded to the greysuit, who gave me a last glance and went away.
    “Everyone alive?” I asked, and saw the ‘no’ in their faces before Zee answered.
    “Ammas from Sixth Squad died during the return to base,” she said, and we all looked down at the same time, as if it was rehearsed. “You remember what happened?”
    “Up to door.” I glanced at my arms again. “It fall on me?”
    “No.” Zee wrinkled her nose. “Your interface started growing again, destructively beyond prescribed limits. It became non-functional and had to be shut down and pared back.” She indicated the purple patterns beneath my skin. “That’s partly the damage and partly slough from the repair work. Your left eye suffered the most, but they don’t expect permanent problems.”
    Nanotech. I sighed. Convenient as it is, I’d really appreciate it if my interface didn’t keep trying to kill me.
    “We’ve only had the outside view of what happened after you reached the door,” Maze said, passing me across a log file. From his faintly abstracted expression, I guessed he was reviewing mine, a thing which always makes me feel totally weird.
    The log file was Haral’s, watching through the gate as I jogged with a curving wobble toward the end to the Pillar. It wasn’t too obvious at that distance that I ran into the door rather than deliberately stopping, but I stood there for at least a count of five before my brain caught up and I pushed the thing shut. I turned to cross to the other door in a businesslike way, but paused in the gap, looking inside.
    And then another wave of light came pouring out, filling the entire space with white, and I heard the Setari who’d been watching me gasp, and Nels said: “Tzatch,” which Lohn tells me is a shortened version of Tzarazatch, a spiritual concept on Tare kind of like Ragnarok: the destructive end of everything. I can’t get Lohn to tell me any real swear words, but he explains the milder ones.
    For about thirty seconds there was nothing but whiteness, and it didn’t even look like it was going to settle as it had the first time, but then it thinned abruptly and was sucked away to nothing, back into the Pillar, leaving the space as clear and empty as it had been the first time I saw it, except for all the unconscious Setari. I was noticeably absent from the doorway.
    The fragment of the log finished, and I looked back up at Maze and then blinked, confused. His face was set and furious, a muscle working in his cheek. Zee was staring at him, as surprised as I was, and when she touched his arm he flinched away, then said: “Watch her log,” and turned his back,